


Leopold Bloom was Always Dead

by hoist



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Biting, Extramarital Affairs, F/F, Light D/s, Light Praise Kink, POV Second Person, Spanking, light medical trauma, lots of great low-calorie Lite(tm) content, pre-widowmaker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 19:29:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14775821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoist/pseuds/hoist
Summary: You must be seen to be loved.





	Leopold Bloom was Always Dead

**Author's Note:**

> You can read this on its own or as a continuation of [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14400570)
> 
> (tbh most everything I put out can be read in the same continuity, probably)
> 
> Big thanks to [negatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/negatory/pseuds/negatory) for helping idea jam and beta!

When you awake the second time, Amélie is bent over the sink. The bathroom door is ajar and you see only the back of her from the hips down. She hasn’t dressed. Water splashes (the sound wakes you further) and the sheets rasp against your neck as you turn, back flat against the cooler side of the bed. Your lungs suck in air, and the muscles pull -- stretching -- delicious.

 

You sigh. Not too loudly.

 

Your comm is still on the bedside table. 00:11. A few emails have gathered since you last checked over dinner. Curling on your side, you flick through them, thumbing sleep from your eye and wetting the corner of your mouth. The battery is at 12%. The charger must be buried in your bag still.

 

“Oh, no.” The faucet runs, but Amélie’s voice cuts through the rush like a lighthouse. “You put _that_ away.”

 

She leans against the doorway. Half-dressed after all. You blink a few times. She’s wearing nothing but the white blouse she skimmed from your back, hours ago, now unbuttoned and just a smidgen too short on her.

 

You stare.

 

And then declare, blandly, “That’s mine.”

 

She hums agreement around her toothbrush. Then she bends to spit in the sink. She pitches her voice a bit louder to be heard over the faucet, wheedling sweet, “And if you’re very, very good, you’ll get it back.”

 

Ugh. “Don’t wrinkle it.” You have to be on base in seven hours.

 

“So grumpy,” she tuts. Water rushes. It sounds like she’s rinsing.

 

Maybe you are a little grumpy. But it bears repeating.

 

“Just don’t wrinkle it. I’ll need an iron, if you do.” She might not even _own_ an iron. Your voice tries to carry some warning through the drowse, helped by the fact that you’re resigned to awakeness. No terrible forfeit -- you seldom fall asleep before 2:00. “I have to be on base in --”

 

“Yes, yes,” she slices in, and something clatters against the sink before she appears through the threshold.  “The ever-tireless Doctor Ziegler.”

 

Her look is stormy. The tail of your blouse flutters at her thigh as she shrugs out of it, just gently enough to avoid making crêpe paper, before Amélie wrestles it onto a hanger and into her closet.

 

Your eyes pinch. Now you’re _both_ grumpy.

 

The friction leaves her nipples firm but you get only a glimpse of them in the low light before they’re covered -- Amélie snatches one of her short robes from its hook and yanks it on.

 

You sigh quietly. She retreats to the bathroom. There is a full evening routine that she’s missed, for obvious reasons; perhaps she will begin it now.  Perhaps she will vanish into the shower.

 

If so, you’ll long be asleep by the time she’s finished.

 

You wet your lips. “Your things are much more flattering, anyway,” you say. Trying to mitigate the sourpuss mood. Trying to draw her out again.

 

(Over the past months, you have gotten much, much better at flattery.)

 

There’s a pause. Her silhouette on the wall moves, in time with the soft noises of skin on skin. You watch her movement as a shadow and you wait.

 

Then she leans: just enough to catch your eye past the threshold. Her brow is cocked. Her long, long fingers smooth down her throat, over her cheeks, her chest -- perhaps moisturizing. The motion has her skin dipping in gentle volleys, ones that carry the Vienna créme of the light from the vanity.

 

You wet your lips.

 

The sheets snicker as your elbow props, bracing your head in your palm. It helps to keep you from digging through your comm again. “Why even want any besides your own?”

 

The faucet continues to run. Has been, this entire time. The wastefulness bites in you. And for a moment you are back in Myanmar, doubled up on your knees, eyes stinging with salt and sun and hand-purifying a patient’s drinking supply. The groundwater surrounding the medical encampment had been contaminated with a compound that rendered it impotable, possibly for years to come, and even with careful rationing of the aid that came in trickles, by air, by night, by life-giving liters, there still was need to wrestle snowmelt from the mud (through coarse weave, through cheesecloth, through two sandbagging hours’ of sleep), more precious than the cracked surgeon’s fingers you used to squeeze.

 

You try to imagine Amélie there. Smoothing insect repellant and industrial sunscreen, instead of her Dom Perignon moisturizer.

 

She only answers once she’s vanished past the threshold again. “They do not smell like you.”

 

Warmer, now. It never takes much digging to unearth a flirt.

 

You puff a sigh through your nose. A crick in your wrist has begun to incubate; you shift, settling back against the pillow. “And what do I smell like?”

 

“Right _now?_ ” Her smirk is audible, even over your scoff.

 

A smile rises to you. Your hand moves to cover it with knuckles as she steps back into the bedroom. The robe’s tie has come loose. Whether intentionally or not is impossible to say. The hem, trimmed gold with half-melted peaks and whorls, like caramel cursive, frames her flesh from throat to thigh like cupped palms.

 

“It’s subtle,” Amélie says, startling you. Her pointed tone makes very clear that your eyes are _not._

 

The closet’s sliding mirror door  -- one of them -- is still open. Amélie reaches: she cards her hand along the sleeve of your blouse, the scrape of fabric sounding sugary against the skin.

 

Goosebumps spring to life along your arm. Where the touch would have been.

 

The muscles in your mouth pull.

 

A mess. It’s a mess. Exhausting, if you’re honest. At your desk, in your car, or curled in bed alone, you often think of your attraction to Amélie as exactly that: attraction. Enjoyment. Short-lived, animal magnetism. An entertaining hypnosis that you can take or leave at leisure.

 

It’s selfish. Yes -- yes of course. You don't fool yourself.  In a lifetime of putting yourself second to others, it seems natural -- inevitable, even -- to fall victim to some little blip of selfishness. These things happen. Never to you. You’ve thought of your run as the other woman to be a temporary entanglement, one from which you would soon recover.

 

But here. In her bed. Having seen her in your shirt, toothbrush stuck in her smirk, eyes glinting with candyshop mischief. It brings to mind things you never thought to be on the table. Not for you.

 

“Soft wax, and star anise. Or clove. Something from a jar that you use _just_ a little of.” Amélie’s weight dips the bed, and you twitch awake. You tilt your head to watch. Her fingertip tickles under your chin and sends a scatter of starburst sensation. “Antiseptic, depending on the day.”

 

You blink up at her. Sleep, thick and dumb, has sunk back into your tongue. “What?”

 

She laughs. The sound has heat filling your head. “That’s your scent, _colombe._ ”

 

Oh.

 

“Did you fly to Neptune for a moment?” Teasing. “You work too hard.”

 

Her hand cards through your hair, and the pass of warmth is like a bale of sunlight in the room.

 

“What do I smell like?” Her eyes are warm in the low light. “Normally.”

 

Oh.

 

You think. You try to. Easier said, with Amélie so suddenly close.

 

“ _Tiens_ , such a face.” Her lip curls. Scowl or smile or both. “That bad?”

 

You flush; you grimace.

 

“I’m trying to think.” It comes out a mumble. Part of you wants to sit upright -- to be at eye level with her. Maybe it’s the burn of Sunday school shyness keeping you there.  “My sense of smell isn’t very strong.”

 

It’s not a lie.

 

“Hmmm.” She mock pouts. The shape it makes draws your eye like a lure. “Maybe you should be wearing _my_ shirts.”

 

Amélie’s voice can register as a physical touch in you, even at the most sober of times. But here? Now? With her coiled beside, looming like a deadfall? You can feel her eyes on your body through the sheet.

 

A deep breath calms you. Some. You clear your throat, and pretend not to see the smug quirk to her mouth as you make a return.  “Luckily I have the real thing right here.”

 

You have gotten slightly better at banter.

 

“Oh?” she asks. Her eyes cut unwholesome. “You don’t want to sleep?”

 

Oh.

 

You hadn’t quite meant that.

 

One hand strokes your thigh through the sheet, lazy, and you give a weak laugh. “The ever-tireless Madame Lacroix.”

 

“Guillard.”

 

Your throat catches.  Her face is still.

 

The both of you hold. Her eyes tell you nothing. Somewhere in the chateau, a board settles.

 

Again, you swallow.

 

You reach: you stroke your thumb along her cheek. It’s godly soft from the lotion. A gentle rumble comes as you clear your throat. “Guillard, then.”

 

“‘Madame.’”

 

Now there’s a jaunty pinch to those eyes. Relief slots into your chest.

 

“ _Madame_ Guillard, then.” You try to tut in imitation of her. The impression fails, but the mood lightens. “So very particular.”

 

“Particularly good.”

 

It’s a terrible line that shocks a laugh from your chest. But then she’s caging closer: she’s kissing you. Her weight is gentle but not quite careful as she positions you both back into the bed. Some circuit thrums with the warmth between you, there, between your mouth, and your brain, and your heart, and your belly, and the hands now working into her hair, weaving it through your fingers.

  

Amélie slips on top of you, perfect as a suture -- warm, milky, like the brush of first light. She’s covering you and petting your mouth with hers. It’s a call and response as heady as cough syrup, and you reel back into her bed.

 

The same. Same as ever. When Amélie touches you, the nerve endings roll like winestains from every point of contact: bell-peals through the bone and pooling in the dips of you, in every soft place: in every ossified dagger of cortical bone. Perhaps your autopsy will show her name fossilized in your ribs.

 

“Amélie,” you sigh. She puffs a laugh against your cheek, against your neck. And then she’s smiling into your throat and then she bites you.

 

Constellations burst to brightness, there, and your breath knots. The mattress dimples beneath your heels as you press down with them -- needing something -- bridging your hips into Amélie just a bare few inches. Through the cotton, she can feel you. She must.

 

She laughs again, lower. You could paint a darkroom with that laugh.  “We don’t _have_ to, you know.”

 

Tease. Dreadful, goddamned tease.

 

“You have me committed, now.” You try to bring your breathing back. “Too particularly good.”

 

You expect more ribbing. More cloying charm. Something like, _I think you know_ **_exactly_ ** _how I got that way,_ radiating from her eyes like a vacancy sign.  

 

Instead she murmurs, “You’re a challenge, doctor.” Her fingers idle nonsense along your sides. Just firm enough not to tickle. “I’m never quite sure with you.”

 

That’s unexpected. You go still under her. Mostly. Except for your chest’s swell and fall. “What do you mean?”

 

She mostly stills, too. Her kisses slow but they keep coming. “You’re so far off, sometimes.” The soft hairs along the side of your neck take her attention. She nuzzles, breathing you in. “I’m just never…” A kiss, and she toys with the hairs with her lips.  “... never completely sure.”

 

The mouth moves further, down your throat, still kissing, but she stops at your clavicle. You’ve gone too still.

 

“Say more.”

 

Her eyes are careful when she pulls away. She searches you. Maybe your voice had been a little flat but you aren’t certain what she’s looking for.

 

“I’m not upset,” you say.

 

Rather than relax, she sighs, and settles back on your hips. The backs of her knuckles graze your ear before taking up a lock of your hair to toy with. You cannot follow the motion with your eyes, so you study the line at the corner of her mouth as she wets her lips. In a few years it will be a wrinkle.

 

“If I don’t look at you _just_ right,” she begins, “you… hmmm.” Her touch leaves your curl of hair to brush along your cheek. It’s fog-soft, barely felt. “You disappear.”

 

Quiet stretches. Your breathing has settled; it’s almost stopped.

 

Then she smiles a lilting zigzag. “Accursed with parallax.”

 

Ah.

 

You sigh, but try to smuggle it. Amélie’s taste for niche information and pet interests involves the need for some bracing. Compliments aren’t all you’ve learned, over the past months.

 

“What’s that?” Her lips purse.  “Too above hearing more?”

 

“Oh…” You simper. “Never.”

 

“You -- ! You are _terrible_ !” Her hands find your sides -- ah, _scheisse!_ \-- in a vicious tickle and you _yelp,_ squirming away best you can with your hips pinned. “The _worst!”_

 

“Tell me -- _t-tell me! Please!_ I’m listening!” You wrestle her wrists away, giggling, gasping, and she has you writhing several seconds more before she dives down to ransom your lips again. The kissing is open-mouthed, breathless, lush with laughter.

 

“I thought you liked reading.” Her tone dresses it up as accusation. But it’s difficult to feel that, when it’s punctuated with a suckle at your tongue.

 

You catch your breath; you try. In your youth, yes. You were a voracious reader. And you still do spend great stretches of time reading, but only rarely for pleasure. You make a thoughtful sound in your throat, trying to catch her with a nip. “Not much time for fiction.”

 

She surprises by settling in next to you. The gentle warmth through the cotton nestles along your hip and side through the sheets, and Amélie fixes you with a challenging tilt to her brow. “Now, if you would --”

 

You lap at the corner of her mouth, where the wrinkle will be. She snorts, and nudges you.

 

“Listen! You bad girl.” She pops a few fingers at your hip. Her throat clears with mock royalty. “I shall demonstrate.”

 

Now that she’s here, pressed against you whole, it’s difficult to give her space. Her bodyheat is like brandy, like a rare afternoon doze at your desk, and you find yourself snuggling closer, anxious for it. “What book is it from?”

 

“Mmm… can’t recall the author.” She puffs air through her nose, amused, as your lips find her collar. “Something Irish.”

 

You pull back with a groan.  Of course. Of _course._ “Oh, don’t talk to me about Irish literature.”

 

A laugh bubbles against your cheek as she leans, closing the space again. Her breath is sweet. “Oh?” A nuzzle at your temple; quicksilver brush of lips. “Troublesome professor?”

 

A troublesome ex. You shake the topic away with a grimace, one that Amélie peppers with kisses.

 

“Tiens, tiens, _such_ a face.”

 

She resists the urge to press you. Thankfully. Then she shifts to a more comfortable position on her back, long body almost dovetailed to yours: hip-to-waist, shaping soft, content with your shoulder as a pillow.  

 

( _You_ are content.)

 

The two of you are nearly cheek-to-cheek when she repeats herself -- “Parallax,” -- and holds her palm up towards the ceiling, as though shielding sun from her eyes.

 

It’s informative. Your sensory acuity tends less towards the olfactory and more towards the visual. It tells far more, you think, seeing. Amélie’s fingers are long, delicate, manicured. Uncalloused. More attuned to holding cigarettes and wine stems than pens or utensils. The only blemish you can parse out from the birch of her skin is a nick along the first knuckle of her index: from middle school, she told you, adventurous meal prep, battling a leathery cut of beef round with a dull knife.

 

(“There's an only time for everything,” she had said.) You have seen no other scars.

 

“Close one eye.”

 

You blink both, at first. But then you do. Depth perception dissolves as you keep watching.

 

“And now the other.”

 

“... both closed?”

 

“Mm, no no -- one at a time.” You can hear the tap of her pulse in the pause. “Alternate.”

 

You do. Quickly, and then slowly. Amélie does nothing with her hand, from what you can see. Your patience wears. “What am I looking for?

 

“Do you see my hand move?”

 

“... no?”

 

“Look.” Touch at your chin steers you towards her. You're close enough to count the striations of connective tissue in each iris.

 

She alternates: closing one eye, and then the other, as you catch your breath. “Just like that.”

 

You… well, that’s what you _were_ doing. But you try again, with Amélie’s coaching.

 

“Watch it move.”

 

“... but it isn’t.” You frown.

 

“It is.” She sounds offended. “You’re _seeing_ it move.”

 

You stop, fending off an eyeroll. You’re mostly good at hiding them by now.

 

“It must be nice,” you start, mischief tingeing, “to be a beautiful young blueblood.” You let your eyes cast at her sidelong. “So much time for enrichment.”

 

“‘En _rich_ ment?’” She grunts (actually _grunts!)_ as she struggles to pull away, stymied by the sheets. “Am I being mocked? Are you mocking me, Dr. Ziegler?”

 

You’re giddy, there, burrowing vainly into the bed -- ridiculous -- like you’ve downed a champagne flute of nitrous. And then a whole bottle, and laced with pheromones for good measure, as Amélie slips perfect as eclipse on top of you. Her weight settles over your belly, simple and filling as a meal, and you feel the heat of her through the sheet. Just a thin skin of cotton. Your tongue goes thick as gauze remembering, just hours ago, the plump lips of her vulva: velvet sweet and leaking ripe as stone-fruit around your fingers, in your mouth. Spilling her pleasure. You had your fill, but again, you are hungry.

 

“You don’t like me sharing interesting things with you, doctor?”

 

Her hips swirl in cold-blooded _adage,_ like a cobra coiling -- so at odds with the maddening heat, with the paralyzing pressure.

 

But all you can think about is whether Amélie is wet on the other side of the sheet.

 

“If it please Madame,” you grate -- somehow -- around the phantom flesh and water in your mouth, “perhaps she should be called Professeur.”

 

You’re cold. Heat gone, and sheet stripped away: it crumples to cover only your ankles and Amélie mounts you again and pins your wrists to the mattress in one smooth, matador motion.

 

“Cheek? Hm?” She grinds (she _is_ wet, slick and scorching, ah _Gott_ ) and you gasp at the jagged centrifuge of color in your nerves.  “You won’t behave?”

 

The words as much as the tone trickle down your spine, into your belly, arousal stuttering even higher. You know with terrible, decadent certainty what Amélie’s closing in upon.

 

You wet your lips.

 

“You won’t be my good girl?”

 

“Amélie.” You take your lip between teeth and close your eyes. Embarrassment turns your face towards the pillow.

 

“Ah, ah.” Touch at your jaw steers it right back. Her thumb tweaks your chin. “None of that. Just be sweet.”

 

She coaxes. With her voice. Her touch. Her eyes like spiked tea, the fibers snagging coarse as a hunter’s net. “Be good for me.”

 

You see no cause to resist. Not when she sounds so reasonable about it.

 

Her fingertips pet along your wrists once you relax them, and she hums approval. The moment gives her chance to shrug from her short robe. With a flick to one side, you are both naked again.

 

“There.” She cups your cheek. The soft pad of her thumb tucks along the seam of your mouth, and you take it in before she can finish saying, “Open. Suck.”

 

She’s appreciative. “That’s it.” A purr, full and fuzzing, as your tongue rolls along the pad. “That’s very good, _petite colombe_. So beautiful like this...”

 

The approval is drugging. Dizzying. Coated molten thick in the liquer of her voice. And you enjoy. You -- you let yourself. Enjoy. You let yourself melt. Let Amélie sink you into the mattress: into her bed, into her words, you let her take you.

 

You come close, twice, and she pulls away each time -- leaving you riveted and hard-eyed with want. If she wants to tease, not much can stop her.  Nights like this, shuttered off, wet-eyed with need, slivering minutes away with each stroke, kiss, your teeth in the plum-pink of her lip, the only place she allows. You want like a burning woman to leave your mark on her -- anywhere -- her hips, belly, breasts, neck -- the maddening, supple solstice of her thighs. And you cannot. And so you always, always leave her as you found her.

 

But Amélie. Amélie.

 

Amélie likes to bite and suck your soft places, everywhere covered by clothes, everywhere that can hurt or delight: likes to ruin, to leave runes, to spellbind the blank spaces of your skin into a mosaic of raspberry leopard-print that you can only trace in the shower, in the mirror, as you dress, knowing exactly why Amélie will not let you bite back.

 

It aches, now: pleasure damming, damning, and the moment she moves away you arch and follow -- to chase even more contact, more friction -- but the way she’s half-pinning you has the angle all wrong.

 

Crooked pain lightnings along your back and you cry out.

 

 _Ah,_ you think, _Fuck._ You forgot.

 

Amélie’s weight vanishes. Your eyes open to see her hanging one-legged off the mattress, flushed but frightened. “Are you alright?” You’re already waving her off but she combs sweaty bangs from your eyes, peering closer. “What hurts?”

 

“My back is just sore.” You smile. It’s closed-mouth, so your breathing is heavy through your nose.  “I’m alright.”

 

When she seems unconvinced, you press your hips to find her again -- let your lips play along the skin of her thigh. _Keep going._

 

Too late. She pulls away even farther. _Scheisse._

 

You try for a pout. You’re cooling down, now. _Scheisse!_ “Come back.”

 

“Not until you tell me what's wrong.”

 

The frustration, already simmering lower, bottoms out in you with a sigh. Your hand finds the beginning of a tension point in your temple, and presses. “I’ve just been working.”

 

That’s not quite true. She can hear when you slip a lie.

 

You clear your throat. “Something new I’ve been working on.”

 

“What’ve you done?” The accusation cuts. You maybe flinch. “Turn over.”

 

This is _not_ how you wanted to spend the early hours.

 

But you do. You’re careful, easing onto your side -- untangling from Amélie as needed -- until your face is pressed into her pillowcase, breathing her in. Even you can make out the scent this way. It’s… it’s good.

 

You don’t know how to describe it, but it’s good.

 

You focus on that in favor of the sound as she inhales at the sight. The room had been dim enough, and you on your back to conceal it. Belly to chest, lips to lips. She hadn’t noticed.

 

“It’s nothing to worry over.” A muscle in your hip twitches as she touches there. She’s seeing the insertion sites primarily along the lumbar and lower thoracic. The incisions are small, but number over a dozen, and the bruising has not had much time to settle.

 

She touches, very tenderly, and part of you wants her to be angry. To be furious at the danger you’re putting yourself in. Part of you wants the protectiveness she told you that first evening. Framed in firelight, vengeful and heart-stopping.

 

“Oh,” she breathes, and it wrenches, “oh, what are you doing?”

 

“It’s just sore.” You shy from the question. “Some testing. Nothing serious.”

 

You were a terrible candidate from the beginning. Doctors tend to be atrocious at maintaining their own health, to say nothing of semi-sedentary ones with scoliosis.

 

But that's the strange thing. Your body is sore from the invasion, yes. But in truth, you've never felt better. Your posture has improved. And though your muscles ache with lactic acid from the weight-bearing regimen, from running each trial yourself, it's not the ache of damage in your body but of growth. Besides the post-op soreness, your back hasn't been so pain-free since gradeschool.

 

But that would make Amélie even more wary. She's suspicious of anything beyond the traditional doctor imagery. Even now, she sounds full of dread. “What is this doing to your back?”

 

“I’m taking care of it.” You wet your lips, and your tongue brushes her pillowcase.

 

“‘Taking care of it,’” she echoes, hollow. You cannot picture her expression. “‘Taking care of it,’ she says.”

 

The pause stretches between you.

 

Her hand along your back. The muscles there tremble, pleased. Your first kiss began not unlike this.

 

“Poor thing. Taking care of everything.” The croon rolls through your flesh as much as the touch.  “Who takes care of you?”

 

No one. You let no one take care of you. You never have. It happens: you grew up too quickly. The timeskip has left your overgrown in some places, and stunted in others.

 

But here is Amélie. You feel _known_ in ways you are unused to. It’s not that Amélie discounts the fame and the genius. It’s just that she sees what holds it up.

 

It makes you want things.

 

“Poor, _stubborn_ thing.” The press of her palms deepens. “You need a little spoiling.”

 

She straddles your thighs from behind, hands petting along your back. The heels of her palms sink along your latissimi, bumping along tangles of sinew.

 

You groan.

 

The weight shifts -- she’s leaning, and manages to snag open the drawer on the bedside table. A questioning noise rises to your throat but a “Shhh,” and a stroke along your shoulder quiets you.

 

“Be still.” A bottlecap _cracks_ and the soft sound of liquid paints a picture.

 

“Is that oil?” you grumble.

 

“I want to give you a rubdown.”

 

“Oil is _greasy_ , Amélie.”

 

“I’ll help you shower if you’re good.”

 

That shuts you up.

 

She manages to use a reasonable amount this time -- just enough to facilitate the languorous  pressure of her hands. Her fingertips sink into the muscle. You feel her touch pause, curiously stroking along the little strings that had not been there before. You’ve put on muscle since your first time together.

 

Pressure, full and gorgeous: knots you didn’t know you had come into play against Amélie’s fingers. You’re making noises, you know. Your breath against Amélie’s pillowcase bounces back at you. Thick and humid.

 

“Let me hear you, _colombe._ ”

 

You moan. There’s no effort in it. She summons the sounds from you, from along your spine, the vertebrae falling perfectly as welcome mats into place for her. _You_ fall into place for her. Amélie with her eyes on you, seeing and careful.

 

The heat is so seamless, so complete, that it makes perfect sense when she begins to fondle you from behind. Even here, she shapes you like clay. She slips into you -- over you -- your clit and lips, hot and full, the feeling pure luxury as she pets you and then slips inside, her other hand twisted in your hair like a mistress at a loom.

 

A whimper makes its way from you. “Amélie --”

 

“Don’t come.” She scrapes a bite along your scapula, tongue flicking too. “Not yet.” Swirl of touch has you arching, and the gasp she lets as you clench around her spills along the sweat of your neck like a home-brewed hex, “Not _yet,_ sweet girl --”  

 

The touch slips away and you moan, anguished. Pushing back your hips only wins you a slap to your ass and you gasp as warmth blooms from the spot: spilling neon-hot into the crib of your hips.

 

_Scheisse._

 

“Be _still,_ ” she growls, and you whimper. “Greedy thing. What do greedy girls get?”

 

Another slap has you groaning. Has you pulsing.

 

You bury your face in the pillow, flushed.  Another smack and you gasp, and you’re not certain if the wetness spilling down your thigh is from the rock of Amélie’s hand or simply _you._

 

“I asked you something.” Deadly sweet. Another slap (so sensitive, already) wrenches a moan from you. “What --” _crack_ “-- do greedy --” _crack_  “-- girls --” _crack_ “-- get?”

 

“Nothing,” you rasp. Muffled in the pillowcase. You want it in your mouth. You want to damage something, to bite, to dip your teeth into the cloth that smells like Amélie.

 

Another snap of impact. You can feel angry red heat humming off of your skin. This time her nails bite at the soft meeting of flesh, just where bottom becomes thigh, leaving a little Orion’s Belt of glittery nerves before rearing back for another _slap._

 

“Noth --” You suck in air. She didn't hear the first time. “-- n-nothing.”

 

_Crack._

 

“Louder.”

 

 _Crack._  

 

“ _Nothing!_ ” Heat, everywhere, only now finds its way to your eyes. Heat and salt. Your throat hitches at the sting, at the pleasure, and breaks at the tailend of what you manage to force out: “They… they get nothing.”

 

Her palm disappears and you wince, bracing. Even as another shiver of warmth and anticipation rolls through you.

 

Then her touch: soft, irresistible, petting over your lips and clit as gentle as benediction. A sob catches: turns to a hiccup. Your limbs melt and  you sag -- barely propped at the hips, where Amélie -- where she’s touching you. Gooseflesh breaks out in whorls where her other hand traces along your back.

 

“That’s right. Very good.” The croon wraps you up, like sleep, like calamine. “That’s perfect.”

 

“Amélie,” you breathe, too quiet to hear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the time she lets you come, the tears have stopped. Her lips seal over skin before bruising a hard kiss against your ribs, and all the while she pets your clit in steady strokes and fucks you with a quiet urgency. When it breaks the pleasure folds you up in waves from the inside, rolls you underneath yourself, leaves you helplessly soft in her sheets.

 

Slow. It’s slow. Coming back to yourself.

 

You lie there. Catching your breath. Tasting the hot nerve in your lip, where you bit too hard.

 

Amélie’s touch pets the sore skin of your backside. Ginger.

 

The contact continues, higher. Then hovers. Lingers. Just along your coccyx.

 

You can feel her hesitation.

 

Then: spider-light: she traces the incisions.

 

You didn’t realize you were holding breath until it seeps from you. Muscles melt just a modicum more into the bed.

 

You’ve almost fallen back asleep before Amélie speaks.

 

“What else do you keep from me?” Low. The words come as though she didn’t mean to send them.

 

You do not answer.

 

That assessment’s unfair, you think. At this point. You spent so much time eluding her, even between the late nights, shrugging away her touch from places more vulnerable than your body. You invested a great deal. So much so that when she did learn more, in peels and pieces, that it filled you with embarrassment at how noncommittally she took the information.

 

She doesn’t want it for any particular purpose. Has not turned it against you. She simply wants to know, and continue as you are.

 

But it’s different, now.

 

You are wide awake by the time she settles down. Still mostly on your belly, you peer at her over the folds of her pillow.

 

With her behind you, out of sight -- the quiet was much easier. Now it’s _silence._ You can only take so much beneath her gaze before you have to break it, even if with a croak. “What time is it?”

 

She puffs a laugh. But she still looks over to check. “A little after one.”

 

The math runs in your head. You have to be on base in --

 

“Already making your escape?”

 

“Don’t be silly.” Planning doesn’t count.

 

She just laughs again. More forced, now. “A bit more time to sleep.” Her knuckles brush a lock from your eyes, and your nerves seem to purr: first at your brow, then your shoulder as she curves her hand there.  “Unless you want that shower still, _colombe_.”

 

Tempting. Oh, tempting. But underneath the offer, you hear her; after caressing your shoulder, you feel her palm slip along your back.

 

If you follow her to the shower, she will pry far more from you than heated moans.

 

“I --” You glance left; you start over. There’s a sour pull of muscle in your brow that you fail to fight off.  “I am… I’m _tired_ , Amélie.”

 

That’s not quite what you mean. She hears right, regardless.

 

“Tired of questions?” Her eyes are light but hard. Another laugh unclicks from her, narrow as a switchblade. “Of meddling civilians, like me?”

 

The tone is haughty but you hear her underneath it.

 

Your hand reaches up and back, covering hers, and you speak without thinking. “I don’t know anyone like you.”

 

The earnestness, it -- your voice sounds so _raw_ to you, so naked, that you cannot bear to look at Amélie after. Your eyes close. You turn your chin away. You wait for -- for something. You aren’t certain.

 

You swallow.

 

But when your eyes open again to see, and find her, Amélie. Her expression...

 

She looks _amused._

 

It seizes something in you. Deeply, violently. Like waking up mid-heart surgery.

 

The sheets hiss as you pour onto Amélie (she huffs in shock) and your hips dovetail between the crux of her thighs, prying her open. You’ve put on muscle since your first time together. It’s a surprise to her, that you can now overpower her. When the timing is right.

 

Your fingers shape along her lips without resistance, finding heat.

 

_Greedy._

 

“Angela,” she murmurs, watching. It’s the first you’ve heard your name since waking curled up in her bed and it hits like a double shot of dopamine.

 

You want another.

 

The angle is hard on your wrist but you fuck her well, there -- feathering, shaping, taking -- until Amélie is clutching the headboard, biting her lip, shivering around you. Her body pulls to take you in deeper. If you can’t scrape kisses along her collar and sink teeth into her neck, suck maraschino stains into the swell of her breasts, you will mark her here, in this way: even in her marriage bed: you will sink so deep into the root of her pleasure that she cannot help but think of you when she comes.

 

You keep the pressure, the rhythm, and lean harder into the tremble of her as she does -- you watch the twitch in her obliques as her waist snakes (choking on the moan of your name in the middle, a curse spilling sideways in French) and collapses back into the bed: bouquet-flushed and jeweled in sweat.

 

Breathtaking. She could ruin.

 

What you would like best is to sink your teeth into that soft plane between her hips, but you kiss instead. You run your tongue over her salt of her skin. One hand is over her eyes, waiflike, and the gesture is such a perfect meeting of uncharacteristic and sweet that you can _feel_ how vulnerable you are, gazing up at her.

 

You can see her in _your_ bed. In _your_ life.  

 

You want more. Your move to press your mouth to her, but at the first brush she butts your head away with her palm. And crosses her legs, for good measure!

 

“ _Est-ce que tout va bien, madame_?” You kiss a bead of sweat from her thigh. She can feel your grin.

 

Amélie grumbles. She huffs upward, trying to dislodge a sweat-sticky bang from her cheek. “I need water.”

 

You can do that. And with a smile. One last parting kiss along her thigh, and you are slipping off the mattress. It’s not just your back that feels better. You’re loose-limbed and sprightly, scrubbed wickedly new, and you take your time sauntering into the bathroom.

 

A glance over your shoulder shows that Amélie is watching. You wink at her (she scoffs! she laughs!) and vanish past the threshold. The light clicks on, and you see yourself, all bare: just as Amélie had an hour before. You try to picture her in the mirror. What she saw, where you see yourself now.

 

She _is_ waiting, though. You wet your lips; it’s tricky when they’re smiling.

 

You take Amélie’s drinking glass from the shelf by the sink. And when you reach to start the water, you see it’s been running in silence all the while.


End file.
